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Schools

Cider Mill, Under Lockdown

What It feels like when a Wilton school practices for a day they hope will never come.

“God forbid…god forbid.” This story was prompted by a lot of people saying, “God forbid.”

We’ve read about Columbine and other shootings on school campuses with more frequency than we would ever want.

So it’s not unusual for schools to rehearse for such a worst-case scenario.  You prepare for the worst and hope that the worst never, ever happens.

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That’s what Catherine O’Keefe, assistant principal of Wilton’s told me as I shadowed her during her school’s lockdown practice. I had asked to come along to see what the school’s third, fourth and fifth grade students experience in this higher-than-usual stressful situation and watch how a school lockdown happens.

 “I also hope that there’s never a fire. I hope that there’s never a school bus accident. I hope that everything will always be terrific.  But I would much rather prepare the children to know that we’re doing this for their safety, and I would prefer to have that drill under very calm and secure situations so that if something real happened — god forbid — the children and the staff are prepared how to handle it, and that we keep the children calm and safe. We do read about things in the newspaper, and it’s incredibly unfortunate, but I’d rather have the kids prepared,” O’Keefe explained.

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“The purpose of today’s exercise is that in the event that there was some kind of an intruder, on the campus or on another campus, and we are also not so far from town, it’s basically a drill that’s meant to contain the children, as opposed to a fire drill where you disperse the children. It’s where something happens in town and the superintendent or the police say that it’s safer for the children to be in the confines of a classroom where we know that they are safe.”

Like most other school administrators, O’Keefe said she and her staff put a lot of thought, time and planning into running the drill, coordinating with town police and school district administrators. There were two police officers on the premises taking part in the drill to make sure that the school community was executing the steps as they needed to.

Overall, one of O’Keefe’s prime concerns was to run the drill in a way that would cause as little anxiety for the students as possible and make sure that it was over as quickly as possible. The teachers had trained and rehearsed over the summer, but this was the first time this year they were trying it with students, who weren’t expecting anything out of the ordinary that morning. Their parents had been notified a few days in advance and had been asked not to let the news of the drill slip out to the kids.

Just a few moments before the scheduled start of the drill, at 8 am, a short announcement was read by classroom teachers to the kids. It was very benign, carefully avoiding alarming words like “shooter” or “intruder,” but rather it emphasized “safe environment” and “remain with your teachers.”

I was to accompany O’Keefe, while she, the other assistant principal Tom Ford, and the two police officers would fan out through the school corridors once the drill started. Acting as if the danger had been contained by emergency responders, it would be their job to check classroom by classroom that every room was secured and every child hidden and safe from a potential intruder. One by one, they’d release each class to head silently to a central safe spot, in this case the gym. There, the students would be met by administrators and emergency officials to be ‘debriefed.’

Before the drill started, there was the usual start-of-school-day energy, with kids flitting here and there: returning library books, visiting the school nurse, just getting to class. A busy gym class brimmed with a lively game of kickball. Then, in one split-second moment, the energy shifted immeasurably as nine low level tones buzzed over the school intercom.

Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

Immediately, doors began closing all over the school — in the library, the cafeteria, in every single classroom. Hallway stragglers were swept into classrooms and within moments there wasn’t a sound from the hundreds of living beings within the walls of the building.

Doors were locked, classroom lights were turned off and window coverings were lowered. Students were ushered into pre-determined safe spots within each room — the locations least possible for anyone with harmful intent to spot a potential victim, even through a window.

Never had I heard the school so still and quiet.

Quickly, the drill leaders began their search, spreading out in four different directions. As they combed through the halls with the master keys, they unlocked each door and gave a predetermined signal* to teachers and students that it was clear for them to move to the gym.

As O’Keefe opened the first classroom door, I peered over her shoulder to get a glimpse of how the students inside were handling it. Darkened by drawn window shades, the classroom looked eerily empty. I saw no one. But once they heard O’Keefe’s reassuring words that it was okay to come out, slowly from under desks and corner nooks and crannies, moved 25 kids.

Still, no one breathed a sound.

It wasn’t until that moment that I caught my breath, remembering my own child, who was somewhere in the school with his class. I pictured him huddled in a corner of a darkened room, pretending to be blasé about the tense situation, no matter how much of a ‘rehearsal’ he had been told it was. To me, it felt more real than I ever wanted it to feel.

Class by class, O’Keefe moved through the halls, unlocking doors and releasing the students. Silently they filed out one at a time, with no one making a peep. They moved so quietly and orderly together toward the gym, where they followed signals and directions from the teachers to sit in orderly rows.

Several hundred 7-to-11-year- olds and not one of them said a word.

When everyone was seated, O’Keefe addressed the group.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of you as you practiced this lockdown. We’re going to continue to practice all of our drills, like fire drills, to make sure we keep you as safe as we possibly can. You have listened to your teachers and you have followed directions perfectly. You did an awesome job.”

Reviewing how everything went, O’Keefe explained how important every step of the lockdown is. “What the police have shown us is that, number one, we’re doing everything to protect the children and keep them safe until the police arrive to help us. But number two, that we’re doing things to slow the intruder down. An intruder can’t get into classrooms, and everything is locked — that’s adding moments when the emergency squads are better able to help diffuse the situation.”

It’s part of the realization that schools now fill a different, much larger role in our towns’ lives. They are more involved in the different elements of the social and emotional lives of their students than ever before. They have to keep track of bullying issues, after school care, medication that students take and so much more.

And now they are havens and targets at the same time. They have to think about protecting their community of children and teachers in a world that, in the worst case, can sometimes be a dangerous, mixed-up place.

Security is the new mindset in schools these days. No longer do they print maps of the schools in handbooks or the like, to prevent making it easier for someone to plan something awful.  Some communities require metal detectors or full-time guards on duty all the time.

It is a different world and we do our best to help our kids get through it with as few reminders of the bad as possible.

Perhaps the stoic words of Lt. Don Wakeman with the  can keep it in perspective: “Hopefully it’s the type of drill that gets done every year in every school and everyone will go through their school years and it will be nothing that ever has to be put into motion for real.”  

Only in the case of god-forbid.

*Elements of the drill have been omitted or amended to maintain continued security at the school, at the request of school administrators.

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